Talk:Pharyngula Wiki
As of now, the front page of the Wiki reads "English Wikipedia's policy on Biographies of Living Persons is policy here too." However, this policy is rather stringent and includes this statement about the use of blog posts and other self-published content as sources of biographical information: : Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject. "Self-published blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some news organizations host online columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Posts left by readers are never acceptable as sources. Furthermore, on Wikipedia, that policy applies when "adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page," so if that policy is policy here, too, I would presume that it applies to any page here as well. Now for people like Michael Ruse or Chris Mooney, this isn't much of of restriction, since they are fairly well known and one can readily find news articles and interviews that pertain to them. However, for those who are mostly known as Pharyngula nuisances, such as just about anyone on the Dungeon page, nearly all the information about them comes from Pharyngula itself, especially comments on Pharyngula. In some cases, the information comes from other blogs and comments on those blogs. In either case, those are the very kinds of self-published sources that aren't supposed to be used. (While Pharyngula is arguably published by a news organization, namely Seed Media, Seed does not subject its science blogs to its "full editorial control," so it's not acceptable as a self-published source.) There are at least a couple possible ways around this. One is to simply use a more lax policy on posting information about living persons. another is to keep the current policy and delete the offending articles. 14:36, January 26, 2011 (UTC) :Good points. What do you think of this: "The nutshell of English Wikipedia's policy on Biographies of Living Persons is a goal here too." My intent is to encourage editors to not go out of their way to be destructive to people's lives, and to provide some starting point for the inevitable discussions when someone wants something damaging removed. MarkovBaines 16:08, January 26, 2011 (UTC) ::I think the "nutshell" thing will do for the moment, but for the long term, it's too vague, since everyone is likely to have different ideas of what the "nutshell" is. Ultimately, you might want to use, say, the RationalWiki Community Standards or something similar. :: 16:45, January 26, 2011 (UTC) :::The nutshell is actually explicit on all Wikipedia policies. In this case it's "This page in a nutshell: Material about living persons must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality, and avoiding original research." Those terms have restrictive definitions at Wikipedia, of course, but for now I think this will do, until there's some real contentiousness to sort out. MarkovBaines 16:57, January 26, 2011 (UTC) ::::Ok, I see what you mean. I missed that box with the "nutshell" at the very top of the page. 17:22, January 26, 2011 (UTC) :Wikipedia's policies aren't particularly relevant here. They aim to hammer contributions from people with widely ranging viewpoints into sober, factual and unopinionated articles. Pharyngula, however, is opinionated, and the Wiki needs a guideline to match. Whilst all biographical articles must remain factual, I see no reason why they must be polite or devoid of opinion. Hyperdeath 17:33, January 26, 2011 (UTC) ::Their Biographies of Living Persons policy is the only one I've selected, and I'm hoping people will take it as personal guidance. Its purpose at Wikipedia is to prevent Wikipedia from causing real damage to people's lives. We should also have that goal. But saying "Ray Comfort is an idiot" is fine. MarkovBaines 18:28, January 26, 2011 (UTC) Question: is it just me, or why does the Wiki connect to the RecentActivities special page by default? Shouldn't it go to the main page? Pelamun 13:13, October 28, 2011 (UTC) :http://pharyngula.wikia.com/ goes to the main page for me. There's something about "Disable my redirect to Wiki Activity" at . Mine is unchecked. - MarkovBaines 11:35, October 30, 2011 (UTC) ::that is strange, because I have the same setting. But I can live with it. Pelamun 09:10, November 3, 2011 (UTC)